There are many lawn and garden chores that need to be handled on a continual basis, usually involving the homeowner doing the work his or herself. At times, awkward lifting, raising, and positioning of soil, peat moss, mulch, compost, leaves or the like causes strains and back problems. Additionally, the standard tools available for performing various ones of these tasks are not always well-suited for the job at hand. For example, when trying to carefully apply mulch around already-planted specimens, it is generally difficult to control the placement of the material, resulting in covering the plant with mulch, having mulch land in the wrong location, etc.
A hand-held gardening tool is thus preferred when attempting to perform precise and accurate weeding, cultivating, planting and digging in a small enclosed or isolated area. A gardener using a hand-held tool can work on a small enclosed plot for plants and bulbs or an area within a garden surrounded by plants with a minimum of disruption or damage to the surrounding plants. A hand-held tool is typically ideal when a larger gardening implement might otherwise be impractical to use. Similarly, the hand-held tool is generally preferred over larger gardening tools because the hand-held tool requires the use of only one hand, takes up minimum space and is easily stored. The drawbacks, however, to working with a conventional hand-held gardening tool are that the user needs to bend over, kneel or sit down in order to get close enough to the ground to effectively garden. Additionally, when attempting to perform landscaping that involves the movement of mulch, peat moss or the like, the small hand-held tools are not properly sized for the job.
In an effort to solve the problem of fatigue associated with applying sufficient hand and arm pressure to the gardening tool to penetrate the soil, gardening tools with elongated shafts of varying lengths to provide additional leverage have been introduced. However, many of these tools require unnatural hand/wrist alignment during use. Additionally, as the length of the elongated shaft increases, a user needs to use both hands in order to gain enough leverage to garden effectively. Thus, while the elongated shaft decreases the amount of back and leg fatigue, the fatigue of the hands, wrists and arms increase by requiring the use of both hands.